Preliminary Plans for TD-80

I finally got a Google Earth image of the property on the blog, so I'm gonna lay out what we want to do with this property.

Goals
I think Dad and I are in agreement about our goals for this property. First and foremost, we want to have fun working and hunting on it. Second, we want it to hold mature bucks.

Accomplishing the  Goals
Goal number one will be accomplished while and after goal number two is accomplished.

Holding mature bucks on the property is an interesting proposition. Knowing that it is only 80 acres, I am not naive enough to believe that we will have mature bucks that are on our 80 acres 100 percent of the time. That is unrealistic. What I would like to accomplish is keeping two or three mature (3.5 years or older) bucks on the property throughout most daylight hours. If we can keep a buck on our 80 acres for 80 to 90 percent of his daylight hours, then he is ours for the taking.

As I see it, there are two major components that will hold a deer on our property for most of his daylight hours. First, there has to be great bedding cover. Second, there has to be more and better food than anywhere else.

Cover
Decent bedding cover is not hard to come by in these parts. There are a lot of wooly areas with low-hanging conifers to offer great cover. However, what we can offer more than the public land area is undisturbed cover. This is what most people call a sanctuary. Hopefully we can make a couple of places very attractive for bedding (most of this has already been accomplished naturally), and then KEEP OUT! These  places are marked in red on the map above. If we keep our presence at a very low key in these places, then they can hold deer for a great majority of the daylight hours in the fall.

Food
I put this one second because that is where it falls in importance. Cover is the most important component. Nothing can replace it. Food has been the hype of whitetail hunting for many years now, but cover is the key.

However, there is no substitute for food. The top priority of a deer is survival. That includes three things: security, food, and water. Security is in the cover. Once we have food, we have created two of the three and there is a small watering hole in the middle of the field.

I invision two food plots. The first is marked in yellow on the map. This will be corn. We will plant corn and leave it standing all year. This is another provider of cover. Corn is a deer magnent. In an area with very little agriculture, the deer should flock to it.

The second food plot is marked in green. It is about .3 acres. This will be a summer plot. I hope to plant the new Biologic Sudden Impact blend. This should give the bucks plenty of good nutrition in the summer as they grow their antlers.

I would love to make both of these plots bigger. If the dozer is capable, then we will. But for now, I'm keeping my expectations low so as not to be disappointed.

We are also looking into a couple of feeders. Obviously these would be shut down in August or September, but they can be a wonderful food source during the harsh winter months up until the summer when the Biologic comes up.

We can't wait to get started.

New Camera!

I received my new camera today. It is a POV camera made by Wildgame Innovations. Hopefully I will be able to put this camera into use before the end of the season.

I also hope to get a new Flip UltraHD in the near future which will complete the filmed hunt experience.

New Property!

I've waited a few days to put this news on the net, but things are looking pretty secure so I'm gonna post it.

Dad received word this week that the landowner of a piece of land that Dad has coveted for many years was willing to lease it. My family is a normal middle class family. Nobody has a ton of money to blow on stuff like a hunting lease. However, this guy gave us an incredible deal that we couldn't pass up.

The property is 80 acres in the area that I spent most of my childhood. Most of the adjacent property is public ground. The public ground has its positives and negatives. The big negative is that the area receives a ton of hunting pressure especially in firearms season. There are two pretty big positives though. First, our lease is adjacent to 1,000+ acres that we can hunt. Second, with all the hunting pressure that the land around it receives, our property should be a great deer holder if we can make the deer feel secure there.

Because of how Dad has long coveted this property, it will be referred to as "The Dream 80" (or TD 80).

The lay of the land is valleys on the southeast and northwest with a ridge in between. Both of the hillsides feature a ton of big hardwoods. White and black oaks are often very productive in this area. On top of the ridge is a 17 acre overgrown field. This is the piece of the property that I am most excited about. The field has two fingers that are great thick bedding areas. In the main body of the field we will probably clear out a couple of signicant areas for food plots.

Needless to say, Dad and I are excited about the opportunity to work on, manage, and hunt this property. We're also looking to talk to others who have tried their hand at property management for big whitetails and get any advice we can soak up.

Crunching Some Deer Numbers

A post on http://www.indianasportsman.com/ inspired me to look up the 2009 Indiana deer harvest statistics. More than anything, I did this out of interest from my earlier article Indiana Bucks vs. The Rest of the Midwest.

In that article I wrote about Indiana's trophy bucks and how they stacked up to the rest of the Midwest. The general idea was that Indiana was behind those other states. I brought up several different issues included in this. Two key issues that worked together were the buck to doe ratio and the proposed shortened firearm season.

In the short research I did today, I found that the total deer harvest beat the previous record by 3,000. The total number of deer harvested was 132,752. That number was not surprising.

Another number I found was that 60% of those that were harvested were does. That is a huge positive. In most of Indiana the estimated doe to buck ratio is around 2:1. A near 1:1 ratio is desired. Harvesting more does than bucks is a step in the right direction.

The other number that I found interesting was that 64 percent of the bucks taken were 2.5 years old or older. That is another good step. I wonder what percentage were 3.5 or older, though. I would venture to say that the percentage would drop significantly to around 30 percent. (Just a guess.)

My thing about Indiana is that I think too many hunters harvest bucks that are not yet mature (3.5 years or older).

I've said before that I am an advocate of moving gun season back into Thanksgiving week and the week after. For now, though, that's not the train I'm on.

Personally, I think antler restrictions would be a good step in the right direction for Indiana. The easiest to enforce would be a minimum number of points. I would suggest six. There are some mature deer that never get past six. This would allow most 1.5 year old bucks to walk and some 2.5 year olds to walk. Spread restrictions may also be an option, but that seems hard for the hunter to judge on the hoof.

Some people would argue that such restrictions would take out those bucks with superior genetics that get them to 6+ points at 1.5 or 2.5 years old while leaving those with inferior genetics to breed. I would say, however, that genetics play a small part in the making of big bucks compared to age and nutrition.

I'm not sure that these are the right answers, but I'm trying to get a feel for what the legislators and DNR are dealing with in these issues. Feel free to weigh in at http://www.indianasportsman.com/.

Hunt Report November 22nd and 23rd

I was excited to get to hunt a lot this week. I hunted yesterday until early afternoon and until about noon this morning. Dad's hunted with me. We've seen a total of 3 deer while on stand. Those were all seen by Dad yesterday morning.

These have been probably the two worst consecutive hunting days in 5+ years for me. Monday was explained away by 70 degree temps. It was so warm that I saw a snake! Today should have been perfect. Hard to explain.

Back at it in the morning.

Where did the rut go?

Some Trail Camera Shots

These are nothing fantastic. I had no pictures of any shooters. This 10 pointer, however, has some great potential. It's pretty hard to judge age at the angles these shots give, but I'm guessing him at 2 1/2 and certainly no older than 3 1/2.

Well, I Promised a Good Story, Here It Goes

 I've experienced all kinds of emotions in the woods. There have been moments doubt and moments of hope, moments of pride and moments of humility, moments of fulfillment and moments of failure. I've been good, lucky, patient and persistent. I've been bad, busted, sniffed out and spotted. I've experienced my fair share of joyful success. But I'm certainly no stranger to demoralizing defeat. Sadly, today's story may be one of my most demoralizing defeat yet.

As I mentioned yesterday, today's plan was for an all day hunt. I have come to love all day hunts, especially in the rut. The ruts in full swing right now, so suffice to say that I had high expectations.

Considering the inch of rain we received up until the wee hours of the morning, I decided it would be best to walk in just as light began to take over. I would still hunt on my way to the stand (much like my successful Halloween hunt last year) and quietly climb into the stand whenever the deer allowed me to get there. I had a short run-in with a small 8 pointer as I neared my stand. He walked around me rather oblivious to my presence.

I reached "the pylon" (the sight of my 2009 buck kill) at least 20 minutes before sunrise. The wind was from the southwest, making this stand on the northeast corner of a thicket a perfect ambush point for cruising bucks. I quietly settled in and watched a beautiful November morning begin. Within 15 minutes I had does to the north of me.

A short time later, I heard some brush crashing to the south. Another decent 8 pointer emerged. I readied my bow, but as he walked under my stand it was obvious that he needed at least one more year. He proceeded to chase the does into the native grass field to the east.

After only a few short moments of calm, another buck came trotting up the east edge of the thicket. Again it passed directly underneath me. He was an interesting, but not the least bit tempting, 9 pointer. He proceeded out to the field with the other buck and does.

By this time the edge to the south of me had my attention. Just ten minutes later another buck emerged from the thicket and started toward my stand. I got one good look at him at about 25 yards and knew he was a shooter. He proceeded to about twelve yards. I drew and gave a mouth grunt to stop him. He stopped and turned toward me, covering part of his vitals with his shoulder. I settled my top pin behind the shoulder and released. The sound was a thumph. The shot was a clear pass through and felt good. (It better feel good at 12 yards!) The big 11 pointer buckled for split second, bolted ten yards only to stop and look back. From that point on, he walked calmly out of sight.

I called Dad to tell the story. He packed up and started on the two and a half hour drive north to lend a hand.

I got down to check the arrow. Saturated! That's a great sign. I waited for about 30 minutes and then began tracking. The blood trail was pretty good for the first 80 yards. Then it led into a field of native grasses where I lost it about 40 yards in. The search for the next spot of blood or the buck himself lasted six hours, covered almost the entire property and ultimately failed.

In the end, Dad and I surmised that the shot was a little bit back. Instead of hitting the ideal vitals such as the heart and lungs, it hit the liver. While a liver shot is a sure kill, the wound is often plugged by the gut which stops the blood trail. Dad said that his experience is that a deer hit in the liver will rarely go further than 100 to 150 yards, but we all know that deer can be inredibly resilient animals.

The day left one of those helpless knots in my stomach. I have been busted by big bucks, missed big bucks, wounded big bucks, and made just about any other sort of mistake you can make. All of those were demoralizing, but nothing touches today. Today was the most demoralizing moment of my hunting career, because  I don't have that buck in my hands, but he is almost surely dead. Hunting is a chess match, me versus the deer. Sometimes I win. Most of the time, they win. I'm okay with that. Today we both lost. That hurts.